Negotiation in the moment (cont)

A few additional thoughts struck me while I was publishing yesterday’s post. Nothing new or contradictory here. Just extensions of the previous ideas.

Firstly, as a piece of advice, I’d suggest that it’s important to avoid leading questions when negotiating consent in scenes. If the submissive is already awash in endorphins and mentally predisposed to agree with the domme, then leading questions are problematic. Saying something like “Is it OK if we do X?” doesn’t help the submissive make the necessary mental gear shifts. The subtext is the domme would like to do X. Instead say something like “Is it OK if I do X or would you rather we avoid it?” That gives a nice simple binary choice (important when someone might be endorphin clouded) and suggests that yes or no or equally valid answers.

Secondly, I’d like to be clear that the onus isn’t always on the domme to negotiate every single activity every single time. I’ve actually been in the situation Miss Margo described in her post – anal penetration when tied up and we hadn’t discussed it – and it wasn’t an issue at all for me. That was because I was playing with someone I was very familiar with and we’d already done bondage and anal play multiple times in past sessions. In those cases I think it’s down to the submissive to take things off the table that a reasonable person might assume were still on the table. If anal play is usually OK but I have an iffy stomach one day, it’s down to me to mention it either beforehand or when the strap-on comes out. I shouldn’t expect the domme to mind read that something previously fine is now an issue.

One final point I wanted to make was actually touched on by Miss Margo in a comment she left to the post. Namely that it’s easier to achieve a great headspace when you trust the domme to negotiate clearly. If I constantly have to parse her questions and try and determine are we negotiating or playing then it’s hard to relax. Similarly if I know she’s liable to try new things and the onus is on me to stop them, then I’ll always be asking myself if I’m OK with the progression of the scene. Conversely if I know she’ll step out of character as necessary and ask simple questions then it makes it much easier to zone out when she’s in character. I wrote last week about taking a ‘holiday from yourself‘ during intense scenes. I think that’s only possible when you can fully relax and trust the person you’re with.

Given anal play got mentioned several times it seems appropriate to finish with this image. I’m afraid I don’t have a source for it. I found it via the Pegging with a Smile tumblr.