I understand how the potential of having your sexual nature exposed to the world could be exciting when you're in a sexual frame of mind (read: horny). I understand the appeal of fantasies like being coerced into sexual compliance or performance by blackmail or other means. I understand the psychological nature of behavior like exhibitionism and submission. I can even understand getting to the point of desperation for someone to interact with that a man would place himself into a compromised position.

What I have never been able to understand, however, is how a man can plan and then carry out a sequence of acts that cannot be reversed and are absolutely certain to have a serious, if not devastating, impact on the non-sexual aspects of his life, to the point of potentially destroying his livelihood and his core relationships.

So 'Phil', shall we say, has a stable, steady-income job, nice family, good circle of friends, congenial work relationships, plays ball with the guys on weekends. Volunteers at the polling precinct during elections. He also secretly takes cock up in the city once a month at the bathhouse during his "business trips", and has an aching exposure fetish. Whenever he can, he has guys use his camera to take face shots of him with his cum-splattered face stuffed with cock, or of him gazing backward into the lens while his cunt is being rutted. The pictures are absolutely of hm, and there is no mistaking what he is doing or that he is loving it.

Finally, one fateful night, he encounters a man online who says he gets off on exposing other guys, and will be glad to do it if Phil will just provide the pictures and the personal information. With his head throbbing with the sexual high of the thrill of having his naked lust shown to the whole wide world, Phil sends all his real-life personally identifying information and compromising images to this man with the click of a button.

>CLICK<

There it is. The thrill of terror/shame/pleasure all at once. The deed is done. Phil thinks, They are all going to know, and something delicious and awful runs though him. For many, this is the moment of reward, what it's all about.

Except, there is no >unclick< button. Once the hit of fantasy and its adrenaline/endorphine rush has passed, a cold, sick feeling settles in. They are all going to know becomes Oh God -They...are...ALL...going...to...KNOW.

Now, it may be that the man on the other end is counting on a sudden onset of post-click panic, and has a PayPal account already in place to accept Phil's repeat transfers of cash to make sure that those photos never end up in front of his boss and his grandmother. Or, it could be that the man on the other end has a fetish just as compelling Phil's was to Phil, and gets off in a big way exposing faggots being faggots. And he's become very good at it, so in short order, Phil finds his private collection of intimate photos prominently labeled with his identifying info posted to various apps, including Facebook and Twitter, and he is sent an email containing the extremely compromising content about himself - and notices that the CC list includes people who really, actually know him, and aren't sexy with him at all.

Bob's company informs him that his job is being outsourced. His dad refuses to speak to him. He is told he is no longer welcome to play ball with the guys (faggot). The people he usually works with at the polls cross to the other side of the street when they see him. His wife packs up the kids and they go to stay with her parents, indefinitely. For some reason, his credit score takes a hit.

I could go on, but the point is, once you're in-real-life-actually-exposed, you can't be unexposed. You can't unring that bell. If a reputation is devastated in that way, it's not coming back. The only thing left is to either learn how to live in the reality of the aftermath, or to uproot and try to find somewhere to start all over as someone else.

I don't have a sense for how common this practice actually is, but apparently there are Phils out there who go through with this.  One sees the images from time to time, and buyer's remorse is too real a thing in a general sense for it not to apply in this sense as well. I get that there are some people who genuinely don't give a shit what anybody thinks of them, and enjoy the freedom to expose their true natures at will; yet I don't really place these men in the same class as Phil, because the feeling they get cannot be the same - to them, there is no equivalent risk, so there can be no equivalent reward. What's more, these guys can do it repeatedly... but Phil can only do it once. Once Phil has committed to exposure, and gotten his intense reward, he can't do it again. Done is done. Those people will all know now, and re-exposing yourself isn't exposure. Phil can expose himself to strangers, and maybe get some tickle out of that, but it will never feel the same as the original high, and every subsequent attempt will leave him feeling emptier.

Why do these Phils make a choice to self-destruct their lives this way? I can understand the power of sexual fantasy, of desire, of horniness, of all of the whole potent witch's brew of influences that make men obey their animal brain-parts when in rut. But when it comes to doing something potentially self-destructive, the mind usually kicks in a warning signal of some kind to keep a man from fucking himself off a cliff. Why not in this case?

I have no answers, but I would love to understand this better. It makes no sense for any man to so something so patently self-destructive and irreversible for the sake of a quick rush... unless, unconsciously, he is using a nuclear option to free himself from an untenable life and force himself to start anew. And if it has come to that, I am sad for him.