Say you’re single with no children. You are abducted, but, for whatever reason, all that your captor wants is to fulfill your every whim. Keep you in a nice place, buy you everything your heart desires, schedule massages and haircuts for you. There is basically nothing this person won’t do or get for you. There are no threats of violence or undercurrents of malice or creepiness. The only thing you can’t do is have any contact with family and friends; and you are, after all, a captive. How long do you let this go on before you start making serious attempts to escape. I know that this is a bizarre question, but there is no underlying scenario I’m thinking of. Just try to take it as an actual situation and see what happens.
If there’s no threat of violence then what happens when I get up, push past him/her and try to leave? IOW, there would always be an implied threat of violence in such a situation. In the real world, the very fact that the captor has done something so far outside normal human behaviour would make them, to me, terrifying.
I’m not trying to be awkward and break the game, it’s just that the scenario is too contradictory for me to be able to imagine being able to handwave away the threat/powerless aspect. So I guess my answer is “immediately”.
FWIW, this is the exact plot of “The Collector” by John Fowles.
ETA: It is possible that the way this excellent novel explores one way such a scenario might play out may be colouring my own response here.
Yemen has a tradition of tribes kidnapping foreigners to force the government to give them public works projects. Apparently, the prisoners are treated very well, more as guests than as hostages. It is a situation very much like you describe and apparently sometimes lasts weeks.
Immediately. I have some serious issues with being controlled by another person or feeling ‘trapped’. There’s nothing money could buy that is more important to me than my freedom and agency.
Additionally I would assume it was only a matter of time until the raping and ritual torture began…
As long as the Dear Leader likes my movies, what the heck.
Well, really nice people don’t kidnap you, so I’m out of there before he stops acting nice.
They could just deny you the ability. Lock you up, or take somewhere far enough from civilization that there’s no way to escape.
I’d hate it, but only because I’m housebound due to withdrawal induced agoraphobia. But I’d be too broken to try to escape.
If I were “normal” again, I’d be more likely to try to contact my folks and tell them I was all right, rather than to try to escape. I’d stay for quite a little while, if I could get a hold of them. If not, a day or two, tops.
A gilded cage is still a cage.
That’s all true but not really what I was getting at. I presume my efforts would indeed be thwarted in some way. But even if I (somehow) knew they’d just use reasonable force to keep me there rather than punishing me, I am guessing my trying to break out would cause the illusion of my pampered prison life to evaporate and at best my living quarters would quickly start looking like an other jail.
After all, the bit about me having everything I want and giving nothing in return would never be right. I would have to be properly accepting of my treatment or know that otherwise I’d be stuck in a plain cell like any other prisoner. If I didn’t, too much in the way of fancy furniture, unbarred windows, proper knives and forks or indeed anything that might conceivably be turned into a weapon and hidden in my room would make me an escape risk.
Incidentally, who do I get to talk to all day? Just my jailor, if that? I think that would literally drive me mad. I presume I don’t even get to play on the internet 
And yeah, creepiest thing of all would be the endless wondering of “Why am I here? What does he/she want? What will happen to me if they don’t think I’m sufficiently grateful for all the presents?”
Hmm, that wasn’t my reading of it though, from memory. Isn’t this more in the ‘Lolita’ style of an unreliable narrator whereby his own projected impressions of the situation probably don’t really compare with other parties? Indeed, the whole symbolism of ‘collecting’ objects and then the girl is pretty sinister in itself.
I start trying to escape immediately (either actually trying to escape or working out a plan on how I will escape) and I really can’t imagine why anyone would go for any other option so I’m subscribing to this thread to find out!
Does the kidnapper feed me? Can I request a nice steak? If so, and if I were provided a steak knife, I’d ask him/her what this odd mark on the steak was, then shove the knife into the kidnappers eye when (s)he bent over to look.
Or something along those lines.
It reminded me of the OP’s premise in that Fred (the narrator of the first half of the novel) totally fails to factor in how she might feel about being held captive in and of itself because he sees her as an object to possess rather than a person in her own right. Or if he does, like the captor in the premise, he thinks he can offset any distress by buying her fancy clothes, artbooks and whatever else she asks of him.
It didn’t really remind me of Lolita because I don’t think Fred’s that unreliable a narrator. It’s true that he rarely understands Miranda’s actions and is often confused by her but I think Fowles writes so that we in the audience see what’s really going on most of the time. And I don’t think Fred ever describes her saying or doing anything that doesn’t take place in reality, for instance - it’s just he usually interprets things incorrectly. We also get Miranda’s thoughts and feelings via her diary to clear up any discrepancies. There is a lot of stuff about how the two really can never understand each other’s worlds too, of course.
As it’s one of my favourite novels, I’m more than happy to chat further about it but in a new thread I’ll open so as not to hijack this one any further. Give me a shout if you want me to start one.
Let me be the first to mention the Stockholm Syndrome and Patty Hearst as relevant reading.
If this person is sexually attractive and/or an interesting conversationalist, a fairly long time. If not, until I get bored (which won’t be long. Then it’s a kick in the shin and off I go!
Not long at all. I mean sure, it doesn’t sound too bad as far as prisons go, but not to talk to my friends and family? No thanks.
Considering that the vast majority of the activities I enjoy involve other people in some way – be it playing multiplayer games online, using forums, going to the gym and taking classes, hanging out with friends – I would submit that it is impossible for the kidnapper to make me happy. No contact with friends and family means no usable connection to the Internet or to any other people at all besides Mr. Kidnapper. No thank you.
I attempt escape at the first conceivable time.
Hazle, why don’t you rent the William Wyler 1965 movie, The Collector (aka The Butterfly Collector) with Samantha Eggar and Terence Stamp?
I’d try to escape immediately. There is no way I could find being kidnapped a tolerable situation.
If there is no threat of violence, I’m not understanding how I got captured in the first place. However, attempts to kill my captor and/or escape will commence approximately 1 nanosecond after I realize I’ve been captured. Oak don’t play that shit.
It sounds like fun role-play between consenting adults who are mutually into that kind of thing, but not something to be considered as a real scenario.
Not my cuppa, but I could totally see how it could be somebody’s / some couples’…