Tell Me About: Consent

Consent in D/s relationships is essential.  When a couple first begins this type of relationship it begins with communication.  Communicating their interests and desires, their likes and dislikes, what they are willing to try and what they are not; consent is formed through these discussions.

When Mr H and I began this journey I asked him to consider ‘doing that’ to me.  The ‘that’ I referred to was a scene from Fifty Shades of Gray, in all honesty I forget which one, but the point is in that moment I gave Mr H consent to try it.

Implied Consent?

As we have a Dominant/submissive relationship where Mr H is in charge and I do as I am told, (well most of the time haha), you may think that means Mr H can do as he wishes, and in some ways he can.  That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t obtain consent throughout our play, in fact, he constantly checks that he has permission to continue and I can remove consent at any time by using my Safeword.

Some relationships have a total power exchange (sometimes referred to as a TPE) and, I’ve often heard the submissive say they are not able to safeword. This sounds as if the submissive has no control over what happens to them, but in reality the limits and rules have already been agreed, most often in a very formal way because of the nature of the dynamic.  I still hope that if they became extremely unhappy in their role they have some way to communicate this.

Between Mr H and I we regularly review what we are interested in trying and exploring together.  We did this quite recently, and identified a few areas where our interests had changed direction.  I highly recommend doing this if you haven’t as it is a brilliant way to open discussion.

What colour are you?

In the early days of our dynamic during play, especially during impact play, Mr H would ask what colour was I.  This was his way of obtaining continued consent. My reply could be one of 2; green, meaning I am happy to continue, yellow, meaning I am getting close to the limit and I would benefit from either a break or a change of pace.  Red would not be an appropriate response to this.  “What???” yes i can hear you screaming this… but hear me out.

RED

Red means STOP NOW.  This word doesn’t wait for a question, this is a word to be used when you absolutely need to STOP NOW.  Does that make sense?  I know you know it does, and so, if I waited for MrH to ask me if I was OK, I am not using the word correctly, because I must have been wanting to stop.  It would be a very lucky coincidence if the Dominant knew precisely exactly when his or her submissive needed to stop play.. in fact there would be no need for such a safeword in this land of omniscience.

If I was gagged, or having my face fucked in a position that meant I couldn’t pull back if I needed to breathe (this has happened to us once during play) and we learned the hard way that non verbal safe cues need to be agreed.  I have heard of a number of these, a ball to drop or a bell, tapping if you can touch your Dominant or a hard surface, it doesn’t matter what you use as long as you have a way to withdraw consent and your partner respects it.

Knowing your limits

MrH knows my limits pretty well and my limits are probably mostly a little higher than MrH’s which means I have very rarely used a safeword to withdraw consent.  He usually stops play before I need or want to – an example of this would be in the recent spanking, where MrH stopped after 2, we had initially agreed to 5 and I had wanted 10. But impact play is only one area where consent in a D/s relationship can be withdrawn.

You lead I’ll follow

Part of our dynamic involves a power exchange, not a total Power Exchange (TPE), but still an exchange.  Before we began our journey I was a controlling person, or should I say I tried to control everything.  I felt powerless so often, at the mercy of others that I needed to have a handle on everything around me, and that included MrH.  I made all the little daily decisions, what we would eat, what we spent money on and often what we watched on TV.  When I had my breakdown I did give up some of that control, but I felt even more unsettled.

D/s allowed me to hand that control to Mr H.  D/s made me examine why I didn’t trust Mr H to do things, why I questioned the decisions he did make, and early in our D/s I only half heartedly handed that control to him.  I still prompted him, expecting him to forget things.  It wasn’t until I read a post he did for The Safewords Club  at the urging of Submissy that I began to believe he was invested in this dynamic.  From that point I gave him my complete consent and allowed him to truly take control and honestly the improvements to my mental heath have been phenomenal.   Sometimes, I still fight for control- I shouldn’t but I do.  In those moments when he puts his foot down, I could withdraw consent, use my safeword and end or suspend our D/s dynamic, but I can’t face that idea.

The improvement to our sex life, the amazing orgasms, the serenity I find in impact play, I wouldn’t want to lose that, and I believe they are intrinsically linked to our dynamic and that is why I give Mr H my consent.

Sweetgirl x

This post was written for Tell Me About.. ‘Consent’, click HERE to read more posts inspired by the topic.

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