This is going to sound terribly attitudinal and somewhat confrontational but I don't intend it that way, I am merely saying what I'm saying and not trying to make a point.
If you can find yourself a Tomiki-ryu Aikido school (like my own or those with whom I know) you'll be able both to learn a art that it is terrible in its beuty and elegance... and it's ability to do mayhem to an opponent. I spend all day in class saying to people, "We do it this way in kata so we don't hurt our partner, the street-do version is... right... here."
There is a squeak/squeal and we stop immediately so that someone can get themselves back in order, then we continue.
We regularly do in class our own version of sparring (I've been 25+ years in hapkido & taekwondo so I know hwat sparring is, and what it is for), and what we're doing in our classes is exactly sparring, though to the untrained eye it wouldn't look like it. Anyone with 10 years in woul look at us and go, "Oh, yeah I see what they're doing there."
If you wanted a semi-competitive outlet, you can get it in the Tomiki system's randori tournaments, or in our subbranch of informal just "figure it out" informal sparring session stuff. It's a lot of fun, and can hurt people real bad, real quick just like any other MA.
We had a bad training accident in class last year, as it happens. Two guys, who should have known better, were going a bit too fast, using a bit too much power, and I *my fault* had turned around to speak to someone else, when I heard SNAP-snap... and I turned around to find one of my 1st degree black belt student standing over a brown belt with eyeballs huge and bugging out of his head saying, "I didn't mean it! I didn't mean to ..."
He had broken the other student's tibula and fibula, simply because of a weird fall. Ambulance came, we picked him up and packed him on the cart, the whole thing.
Aikido is fun. It's dangerous as hell and the people who don't know... just don't know. I know there's lots of poo-poo patty-cake out there... but that's not aikido, out of the aikijutsu. There's some real bad mojo out there, trust me.
I guess you'd need to lay hands on me and mine to know, but that's OK. We welcome visitors and nay-sayers and doubters alike. As long as we can go train, we can go drink beers and there's no hard feeling after.