Limits and Red flags…

Listening to the @LovingBDSM podcast (fuckin’ love them!) LB132 Red Flags and Submissives on my way home from work tonight.  So many good thoughts and thought-provoking conversations with myself in my head.

When I first started talking to my Sir about what I wanted and where I wanted things to go I legitimately had no idea.  I knew I wanted something more than the vanilla I had experienced.  I knew I wanted something strong and passionate.  I wanted more.  When he straight up asked me I had no idea how to respond.  When he asked me what my limits were I said I didn’t know what they were but I couldn’t imagine him asking me to do something I wouldn’t trust him with.  It frustrated him and I felt bad that I couldn’t give him the answer or an answer.  I just didn’t know.

Entering this realm is tough in any situation when you just don’t know enough to know what to ask for or even what conversations to start.  It is hard for me and I am a mature person who has had life experience to balance and reason against.  I couldn’t imagine being young with little experience or no experience and knowing you want something but not understanding it.  As well as not knowing how to verbally explain what you feel.

I have met Doms and Subs that both fall into the “asshole” category.  Doms resembling trolls who clearly have spent too much time watching dungeon porn and are under the assumption that all subs want what they are watching.  Also, Subs, probably watching the same porn, not realizing they were choreographed, staged, and there are limits and safe words in place there as well.  (That’s what I like to think anyway).  I can watch that kind of porn and get off with the best of them.  That doesn’t mean that is what I want my scenes to look like or be like.

I met a Dom on fetlife.  He seemed nice enough.  He took me under his protection.  I had no idea what the hell that meant but in my head it felt safe.  He seemed to have my best interest at heart.  He answered questions.  We were long distance and online so he would give me tasks to do and different things.  This was before Sir and I started playing so I felt like I was getting a good start.  I had already fallen for Sir and wanted to be his sub but the timing wasn’t right back then.  I thought this would be a way to get more “in the know” for when Sir was ready for me.  Then there were things.  A gut feel.  He had a sub and they were open about on fetlife but there was just something off.  He moved a lot.  It seemed every sub he had he had moved to their town or they moved to him and then a month or two months later the sub was gone.  He said he probably had 10 kids.  Five that he knew of.  There were other things that were more than red flags and just things I didn’t agree with morally or ethically.  His facade of having his shit together was getting thin enough to see through.  He told me would come to my town with two of his friends and they would take me for the weekend and train me.  Umm… that sounded like kidnapping since I hadn’t mentioned wanting to have a group scene.  He said I would do whatever they asked me to do and by the end of the weekend I would be broken and ready.  I blocked him on all venues.  He found me about two years later and I ignored the text and blocked him again.

It just isn’t easy to trust.  The thing is, it isn’t easy to trust in any situation.  I am the queen of a million chances.  You can hurt me accidentally or accidentally on purpose and I’ll give you justification and forgiveness.  That doesn’t mean I’ll trust you.  It means I will want to trust you.  That’s my everyday struggle.  Add in the complexity of BDSM and someone like me can drive themselves crazy.  So being young, Dom or Sub, wanting something so badly your filters could possibly drop below the normal.  Yes, there are assholes and there are inexperienced folks just trying to figure stuff out.  Both categories will send you red flags.  All of those red flags should be acknowledged.

In my research and discussions with people, I trust I have learned so much but there is always more to learn.  Being able to ask questions is key.  I’ve never been good with confrontation so in my head when the question was put to me I panicked.  I didn’t want to disappoint.  What if one of my limits was something he really enjoyed and wanted.  Of course, I had limits.  Deep down inside I knew I had them.  I just didn’t know how to express it.

Many years later after our play had advanced and I was discovering what I like, loved, craved, missed, needed, there are still times when I wonder if I am enough.  Sir handed me a book and asked me to go down the table of contents and check the things I was interested in.  That was a beautiful crutch for me to lean on.  It gave me the blueprint.  There were things that were of interest but there were also things that didn’t interest me.  They weren’t hard limits, I just didn’t find them interesting.  Funny thing is some of the things I love and crave and need now, were also things I wasn’t interested in.  So the balancing act continues.

Sir started the conversation before he gave me the book to check out.  “So where do you want to go with everything?  What are you interested in that we haven’t touched on or talked about.  How do you want to move forward?”  he asked as we were cleaning up after dinner.  We rarely have the “I need to talk” type of conversations.  They are all on the fly and out of the blue which is good and bad.

I was taken off guard and I said something like, “I don’t know, what are my options?  I really don’t think there is anything I would not want to try with you”.

“So scat?  Scat would be OK? he said with a straight face and that slightly turned up corner of his mouth that had the hint of that devious smile that always gets me.

“Oh fuck no!” I was quick to respond and I am sure my facial expression was priceless.

“So that’s one,” he said and pinched my cheek.  Then he gave me the book.

Explore, research, question yourself, ask, and if you don’t know what questions to ask, say that.  Say you don’t know but you want to figure it out together.  Say something.

When you see the red flags, get the gut feels, feel slightly (or more than slightly) uneasy, trust those feelings.  Trust your gut, trust your heart, trust yourself.