What if No One's Watching?

Later, in Normal Again (6.17), Spike tells Buffy "See, I figured it out, luv. You can't help yourself. You're not drawn to the dark like I thought. You're addicted to the misery. It's why you won't tell your pals about us. Might actually have to be happy if you did. They'd either understand and help you, god forbid ... or drive you out ... where you can finally be at peace, in the dark. With me. Either way, you'd be better off for it, but you're too twisted for that."

The interesting thing here is that they both, independently, acknowledge what is (at least in part) going on between them. That it's not all about love or even sex (for Spike) or self-punishment and sex (for Buffy), but about addiction to pain. Buffy say Spike is "in love with pain," he later responds that she's "addicted to the misery." They're both right.

In Season Four, when Buffy is considering getting together with Riley, she has the following exchange with Willow (Something Blue, 4.09):

Buffy: I don't know. I really like being around him, you know? And I think he cares about me...but.. I just.. feel like something's missing.

Willow: He's not making you miserable?

Buffy: Exactly. Riley seems so solid. Like he wouldn't cause me heartache.

Willow: (Fake worry) Get out. Get out while there's still time.

...

Buffy: But I can't help thinking -- isn't that where the fire comes from? Can a nice, safe relationship be that intense? I know it's nuts, but.. part of me believes that real love and passion have to go hand in hand with pain and fighting...I wonder where I get that from.

This exchange is somewhat lighthearted, and Buffy's staking a vampire in the middle of her final statement serves to drive home the idea that it is her calling that gives her this idea that love and pain go together, but it's also the first time (at least in my reckoning) that anybody actually says anything, even in fun, making this connection. And it's one that has to be made, not just because of Buffy's specific and bizarre situation, but because at the time of her life she's in (just out of high school and trying on adult life), making a connection between the intensity of misery and the intensity of love is totally typical.

What happens with Spike later is both less and more typical. There has been a ton written about the darkness of that relationship, the kink and the BDSM overtones and the abuse and all that, and I think that is all legitimate. It may have been sexy, but it wasn't meant to be romantic, and it sure as hell wasn't based on anything most people want to identify as love. In a show that literally makes the heartbreak of every day life (starting with high school) into a monster, the darkness in their relationship can be read not only at face value (after she comes back from the grave, Buffy is full of pain and self-loathing and numbness and makes these bad choices, goes to this dark place, etc.) but also something that naturally grows out of something that has already been identified as intrinsic in her personality--attraction not just to drama, but to pain. And that may not be something people want to talk about, but it's normal too.

It's clear from the beginning of Spike's characterization that he gets off, physically, on pain. In his very first scene, you see Dru tear his cheek open with her fingernail and lick up the blood. Because this connection between sex and violence is so clear, and Buffy was, for the first five seasons, a show that loved sexual metaphor, it's not a stretch to say Spike's sexual relationship with Buffy begins metaphorically well before it does literally. When Spike is telling Buffy about killing the Chinese Slayer in Fool For Love (5.07), she says "You got off on it." He doesn't deny it, responding, "Well, yeah. I suppose you're telling me you don't?" In this episode even more than those that come before it, you can see him enjoying her beating him up. And she knows this (later, in Crush, 5.14, when she is asked if she has done anything to encourage Spike's attraction to her, she responds "Well, I ... I do beat him up a lot. For Spike that's like third base.") If Buffy continues to hit Spike, knowing that it is, to some degree, sexually fulfilling for him, isn't she complicit in that fairly early on? Well before he discovers his chip doesn't work on her and they fight-then-fuck in Smashed, their sexual tension builds, and it builds around violence.

The accusations Spike and Buffy make towards each other in Season Six aren't about physical pain, though. They each accuse the other of being in their relationship for the sake of emotional misery. It's harder to make the case of a particular history for this, but I think it's there. I just need to do some more re-watching and find it.