Contractually Speaking

As i stood in the shower this morning recalling Maximus and i going over the details of our contract last night i thought, "Why doesn't everyone make relationship contracts? Why have i never done this before?" The experience was so amazing, so enlightening, opened up so many areas of conversation that we'd not had, and cemented other topics we'd discussed. It sounds so unromantic, a contract, but it feels like one of the most romantic things i've ever done in my entire life. And important.

The specific details of our contract are private, between He and i, but i will share our process, basic format. We used the contract out of Fifty Shades of Grey as a guideline. i know much of the BDSM community aren't necessary fans of this series, but it did offer an example for us when drafting our personal contract. Our contract is NOT that contract, is different, personalized to us, our experience, our comfort levels. We also looked at other contracts on the internet and BDSM activities lists and incorporated them into it.

The BDSM activities list included about 50 different activities and i went through the list first, on my own,  indicating whether i had ever participated in the activity and then rating my interest in engaging in that activity on a scale from 0-5:

• 0 = I have no interest/don't like this, but would do it to please you.
• 1 = Not very interesting/don't really enjoy this too much.
• 2 = This is OK.
• 3 = This is nice/fun/interesting.
• 4 = I really enjoy/think I'll enjoy this activity
• 5 = I LOVE THIS/CAN'T WAIT TO TRY THIS!

and could combine this with:

• NO = Hard limit. I will not participate in this activity at all, at this time.
• ? = Unfamiliar with this activity.
• + = I'm scared of this but would possibly like to explore it.
• ! = I'm embarrassed to admit I like this.

And then made any comments after that i felt were relevant.

After i sent it to Him, he did the same for each item on the list and returned it to me. We later went over the list together, line by line and discussed each item. Sometimes we had misunderstood the activity or modified the activity in order for acceptable limits for both of us. It was really fascinating and brought up some exciting fantasy talk too!

We discussed the contract over Skype, as He was traveling for business and as noted in my previous blog entry, we really wanted to get the contract settled as soon as possible so we could proceed. We went over that line by line together.

What i learned about Maximus during this process:

• He is very protective and concerned about my well-being. This absolutely is NOT about hurting me but allowing me to love Him by giving myself to Him fully and He to derive pleasure by lavishing attention and care upon me in complete trust. This is a tremendous gift that we are giving each other and sharing together--something we won't share with anyone else. Considering that we will continue to be involved with the swinging lifestyle together and separately, this is a HUGE thing.

• He derives a huge amount of pleasure from my touch and gaze, to the point where the traditional protocol of a submissive not looking at or touching their master until instructed to do so was vehemently unacceptable to Him. i found this fascinating and thrilling. i would have been willing to avert my gaze and wait for His orders to touch Him, had He desired this, but love that He so values that about our relationship together.  

• He was adamant about ensuring that our Dominant/submissive relationship was controlled, not to take over our entire relationship. It was important to Him that we had triggers to indicate when we were within the D/s roles for He wanted to ensure that i had equal footing as He valued that and my ability to speak and act freely in our relationship as a whole. 

• While we both wish to continue our swinging lifestyle and even incorporating BDSM within it, it was important for both of us to distinguish our relationship as a priority from other sexual relationships we have. He shared some changes He was going to make in regards to this, which surprised me, things i wouldn't have asked Him to do, but as He discussed them with me, i appreciated the gravity of them to an enormous degree. They are little things but BIG things. We also talked about communicating about those we are playing with, checking in, and what limits we had with other relationships.

• Our level of communication was also written into our contract, a philosophy of "over-communication," and includes full access and disclosure on electronic accounts and websites, calendars, etc. He was very passionate about this, and has been since our relationship became serious. This is not something i've had in previous relationships and i cannot reiterate enough the level of trust and appreciation i have for Him.

i love that we have the contract, not for the sake of the contract, but for bringing us together to communicate about things that others don't, things that they make inaccurate assumptions about that later become huge rifts. i'm submissive but not a Polyanna...i know we will find things along the way that we haven't talked about, things that will push against our boundaries, assumptions we've made, things we've talked about but misunderstood, and will undoubtedly have issues come up about them. But, we have a framework to talk about these things and, if needed, a contract we can amend to address them. And, most importantly, a commitment to each other in making this work.