The Weekender #5: The absence of limits?

This week we are going to tackle David's question: What are some limits that the two of you have made and how did you come to them?

This question has posed both of us some problems. I've been musing over it all weekend and have come to this conclusion: We haven't formally sat down and defined any limits. I haven't sat down and thought about it on my own. I have no idea where Sean's limits lie. Is it a bad thing that in the five or six years we've been sleeping together we haven't talked about what we wouldn't feel comfortable doing?

There are a few things I know Sean wouldn't like, but as a sub I wouldn't do them anyway. For example, though Sean likes being restrained, he doesn't like having pain inflicted on him. I lightly brush my teeth over his back, but I stop before biting on him like he likes to do to me. He has reinforced this many times, saying things like "No, just lightly,"

There are many things I have found since beginning this blog that I didn't know existed and I would class as a limit. For instance - something I think I have mentioned to Sean once or twice - I don't like the look of certain types of bondage, where the woman's breasts turn positively blue. It looks very painful, and can't be good for her circulation. I'm also completely turned off by the idea of needle play. I've seen photos of needles puncturing breasts, thighs, wrists... anywhere possible. I hate looking at images of blood play too, that's too much into the realms of edge play for me. Sean's concurred on those occasions where he'll read me a sex story found on the Internet, and will comment afterwards if he enjoyed it or not. He seems to agree with my tastes, and therefore we've never really sat down to talk about it.

The only other thing I don't feel comfortable is when I feel too closed in. Ironic, isn't it, that a woman who loves tight bondage is also claustrophobic. In the last few years I've paid attention to when my claustophobia comes on, and it only seems to be triggered when the air around my face is hot. I feel like I'm being suffocated. (Again, a strange thing for a woman who loves breath play to say) So a situation like that on the left would make me feel very concerned, my breathing would quicken and in the end I'd panic.

We do have a safety net for if one of us feels uncomfortable. I hate to say it, as most hard-core BDSM-ers don't believe in it, but we do have a system of safety words. It's a kind of traffic lights system - "orange" for slow down and "red" for stop. I don't think I've ever used them, but if I needed to I would. We thought, as well as having the "stop-right-now" word, we'd have a "slow down, not so hard, I don't really like it, but I liked what you were doing just now" word. We both thought that that would be the sensible way of doing things.

There are other things I haven't mentioned yet, that would be a limit for a woman in a vanilla relationship; things such as anal sex, sex during my period and watersports. These things I don't particularly want to do. But as I sit here and type this, I remember saying once that I'd never swallow a man's come. Now, six years later, I'm doing so nearly every day. There are limits that I'll always have and others that, in the future, can be pushed back.

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