Elements Of BDSM: Negotiation and Limits

The easiest way to explain the appeal of bondage or BDSM would be to say that many people find arousal in exploring a form of sexual role playing whether they choose to be in a position of dominance or submission. The sexual role people explore during bondage or BDSM play is not necessarily the role they play in real life and it is actually quite typical for people to be playing the opposite roles from what they normally live out. This is why it is important for you to negotiate with your bondage and BDSM play partner the limits of your bondage and S&M play to remain: "safe, sane and consensual." In this article treating the elements of S&M play, establishing limits, negotiating the interface of play and reality and insignificant damages will be discussed.

Negotiation and limits
Communication is the key to every successful relationship especially where bondage and SM play dates are concerned. Whether you are a Dom or a Submissive, you should make your desires, fears and limits known to your bondage play partner and they should do the same with you. Once both partners have shared their expectations during BDM play and sexual comfort levels, the boundaries of the bondage scenario should be discussed and negotiated so that both parties are satisfied with the arrangement and so that the bondage or BDSM play is mutually arousing. Jay Wiseman offers his advice on negotiating S&M play limits: "Discussing and agreeing ahead of time regarding what will take place during an SM play date (and, perhaps more importantly, what will not take place during this play date) is a very important part of obtaining adequate consent. While people who are highly experienced at playing with each other may need very little or no negotiation before playing, people who are just getting to know each other usually need to do a significant amount of discussion and negotiation beforehand." Don't forget to also agree upon a safeword!

Reality Check
"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way" Ernest Hemingway
Writers write what they know. Ernest Hemingway attests to that. But should you act out what you live? No. Keep reality out of your SM fantasies, especially if your bondage and BDSM partner engages in more than SM interactions with you. Until you have reached a certain level of comfort and trust with your SM play partner, keep the emotional issues or real world negative feelings from interfering in your bondage and sadomasochism fantasy play and bring those issues to light with your partner during a neutral time. This advice is echoed in the Erotic Bondage Handbook where it is written: "SM play is almost always never a good place to attempt to resolve any "real world" negative feelings you have towards another person. It is not a good idea (and in fact it is often outright courting disaster) to do something along the lines of tie someone up and spank them because you are mad at them because they got a parking ticket, failed to take out the garbage, or forgot your birthday. Issues like those get handled in "straight time" and outside of your SM play. There are occasional exceptions to this (there are occasional exceptions to almost everything about sadomasochism) but those exceptions usually occur within the context of ongoing, highly developed SM relationships in which one person has freely agreed that the other person has the right to punish them in this way. In other words, if this right isn't freely agreed upon well ahead of time, it's almost always better to not introduce punishment for real-world misconduct into your SM play."

Insignificant damage. You've heard it, you've seen it, but is it real? Yes. SM play often involves significant amounts of pain, and often a certain amount of damage to the body, but there is delineation between erotic pain and just plain pain. When the submissive encounters the latter the dominant partner should be respectful and restrain their behavior keeping in mind that the default limit for SM or bondage play should be that no intentional actions should be performed that will harm the submissive partner beyond the submissive's ability to self-heal. Please note that this holds true even if the submissive actively encourages such damage in the heat of passion. At times in the aftermath of an intense SM play date, the submissive partner may have welts, and bruises, but under no circumstances should they have large deep lacerations, fractures, or deep emotional trauma. And they should still be alive.