The 50 Shades of a BDSM Contract

So you're curious about BDSM. You've done a little whipping. Maybe you want to try something a little more edgy. Remember, this article comes from the dominant/ Master perspective. In this case, Master Gothos signs a contract (or agreement) with his submissives. If or when you create your own contracts, they likely will look a lot different. Jean-Luc educates on the importance of BDSM contracts.

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So you’ve read 50 Shades of Grey. You've either convinced your husband or boyfriend that you want a dominant/submissive component to your relationship. Or maybe they've come to you saying that they want to add this component to your relationship. You remember in the Fifty Shades, there was a contract and tell them you want one.

What we're reviewing

Here, we're go over what a real dominant/submissive or BDSM contract looks like. Keeping in mind that this is just one way of doing this sort of thing, and that there are many different kinds of contracts for scene play. We are just going to cover the basic concepts of the dominant/ submissive contract.


A note on safety 

A couple notes of safety here. Only do this with partners you trust and have a good solid relationship with, money should never be part of this process. Contracts are an expansion of a relationship that wants to take a more committed track and contracts normally include a permanent collar. At least in my opinion, but then I like Oreos and chocolate milk at the same time. I’m crazy like that.

Why a contract?

Ok so the first thing you should have in your contract, and just like in the book. It should list all of your hard limits. I think of these as the, 'not in a fucking million years' or, 'for any amount of money ever' limits. You should know your limits and what you do and don’t like. For me, I draw the line with knife play, golden showers, needle play, or anything that involves blood. This is why communication is so very important in the dominant/submissive relational dynamic. You have to be completely open and honest about what turns you on and what turns you off.

Decide what you like

The next thing listed in the contract should be your likes, wants, desires, and things you might be curious about. So if you enjoy being tied up and hung from the ceiling and used as a pinata of sexual pleasure, that should be in the contract. As should any expectations you have for your Dom. This will be the rare time you can and should be talking freely as equals. Nothing should be left unsaid during this time.

Now, the contract will also have all the expectations that your dominant will have for you. Personally, I have some big expectations that I include in the contracts that I have issued in the past. So I’ll use a past contract as an example. I’m a strong believer in the K.I.S.S. concept of life. Keep It Super Simple. I despise the word stupid hence the modified version.

A sample contract

So here is an example of what you might expect if you were to enter into a contract with me. Also I tend to enjoy having domestic submissives, so this contract will reflect that (as I’m terrible with house work). Also, because this is consensual either party can end a contact at anytime.

The contract

You are hereby entering into a contracted dominant/submissive relationship. All expectations will be met or punishment will be given out. This relationship can be ended by either party at anytime.

The Submissive's Obligations

#1 You will be available to me at all times.
#2 You will be active in keeping yourself healthy with Diet and Exercise.
#3 You will maintain the house as described and directed by me.
#4 You will maintain contact with me during the day, and you will check in with me if you will be late getting home. This part is important and I will explain more here in a bit.
#5 You will have dinner ready at exactly the same time every night unless I have said otherwise.

Submissive Hard Limits

It would be here that the submissive would list all of his or her hard limits and the things they won’t do as far as sex play and kink.

This next half of the contract would explain the expectations that the Submissive would have of his or her dom(me). This would also be where the dom(me) would list their hard limits and those acts they won’t be taking part in.

Now a couple of notes, this is a living document it can be adjusted as needed by either person. I have a very hard line when it comes to my subs. I expect them to be home when I get home, and I expect them to be waiting by the door as I generally tend to be home the same time every night. I also tend to lean towards domestic submissives as I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m terrible with housework. My mind is normally on other things and it’s normally an afterthought because I’m so distracted by other things. So most of my contracts tend to reflect that aspect.

A note on the contract

I take contracts very seriously, because it’s a written agreement. Although I don’t take it this far, there are some Dom(me)s that will have contracts notarized as legal documents. I have always believed that if you have gotten to the point you want to make the commitment of a contract, you have built up a very strong trust of each other so there is no need to take it to that extreme.

A word on the dominant in this contract (AKA me)

My contracts come with a collar and a promise to take care of my submissives. Although a lot of people have been saying otherwise, I believe submission is a gift to the Dom and that it should be respected as such.

I hope this article has given you a glimpse into what you can expect from a dominant/submissive contract. Please feel free to leave your comments below, tweet me, message me on Fetlife, or you can read my other thoughts on sex and sexuality on my blog, Mindchaotica.com. In the meantime make sure you keep it Lusty!

Jean-Luc Gothos is our resident pansexual geek. He's founder on Mindchaotica. He is also very active on Twitter, Facebook, G+, and Tumblr. I’m also a writer for Life On The Swingset, Kink~E Magazine, and he also reviews sex toys on EdenFantasys and writes for their sex positive online publication SexIs Social.

Have a question, comment or concern about this article? Please feel free to comment below.

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Gents! 5 Tips to Being Sexually Dominant

Has your partner asked for more domination in the bedroom? What better holiday gift than one of dominance? Now, if you're not sure whether this is exactly what your partner wants, do ask them – keep a constant and open communication.

With that, we've heard from ladies who want a dominant partner. We've heard from gents who want to be dominant, but they're afraid to hurt their partner. We get that. How lovely and nice of you. You should be proud that you're such a nice guy. No, seriously. But for now – if you've heard your partner ask you to dominate them, Portia Blush, our queen of dominance, has some ideas on how you can do just that.

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Being sexually dominated in the bedroom, although not a new fantasy by any means, is becoming less closeted. It's a more openly encouraged, erotic fantasy among women (think: Fifty Shades). More women are feeling safer about speaking out about their desire to dominated in the bedroom.

Maybe it's the popularity of books like Fifty Shades of Grey that are finally helping us feel comfortable and accepting of our own desires. Or maybe it's the readily accessible nature of sex-positive information on the internet. Whatever it is, we're asking for what we want. And what do we want? Well, it seems a lot of us want our partner to take sexual control of us!

Whether your girlfriend or wife just got finished reading Fifty Shades, or if it's been a long-time fantasy of hers, perhaps she has asked you to take the lead and be dominant in the bedroom. Now what?

Bringing this fantasy into fruition can be somewhat daunting, especially if you have no idea where to start. Here are 5 tips for learning how to be that dominant man your partner is lusting for!

#1 Talk, talk, and more talk

I know, you're probably thinking that talking things out will ruin the fantasy for her, but that is so not the case. You have to find out just what makes the fantasy so erotic for her for it to be effective. Communication is key to lubrication, I like to say! Is it just rougher, more animalistic sexual aggression she wants from you? Does she want to be tied up? Spanked over your knee? To be ordered about like a sex slave? Ask her what she finds erotic about being dominated by you, and you'll have the frame work you need to enjoy a whole new sexual adventure together!

#2 Feeling nervous? Try role play


It can be hard at first to try something new, or doesn't come naturally. You may have some reservations, or some inhibitions of your own, and find it difficult to trust your own instincts.

One of the best ways to help yourself through this is role-playing! Pretending to be someone else can help free you from the tape in your head that says, "I must be this way," and can allow you to let go and try something new. Be the Christian Grey she wants and she can be Anastasia. Be the teacher and she's the student, or maybe the cop, and she's the naughty law breaker! As En Vogue sang, "Free your mind, and the rest will follow."

#3 It's a two-way street

You have fantasies and desires too, as well as needs to be met just as your lovely lady wishing to submit does. Maybe there's something you want her to do for you. Perhaps you have wanted her to give you head in a specific way, or maybe you've thought about what it would be like to bend her over the dining room table and have your way with her from behind. Blending your desires with your lover's, in a harmonious way, will bring a symphony of erotic pleasure and fulfillment for the both of you. Power exchange is a dynamic in which we exchange power by giving our will to another, and that  can be a very sexy experience.

#4 Use your imagination

It’s very easy to get caught in the trappings of toys like ropes, paddles, and riding crops, and forget about the mental and emotional aspects of dominance and submission. Flex your mental muscles and use your imagination. Create an aura of dominance using just the way you move, speak (or don’t speak), and act. Look to characters from books and movies that you see as "dominant", or ask your partner who she thinks makes an incredibly sexy dominant male character! Find what inspires those feelings naturally in you, and make the role your own.

#5 Everyone loves toys

OK, so your partner really wants you to spank or paddle her – don't worry about spending a fortune on expensive toys right from the get-go. You don't need high-priced toys to have a good time. For spankings, everyone likes a god ole' fashioned, over-the-knee, bare-hand spanking. If you want to play around with different sensations, try the back side of a hairbrush, or a spatula! For more on spanking, check out Spanking 101.

No need to buy fancy restraints if you want to play with bondage! You can buy basic rope at your local hardware store or home improvement store, or try using silky scarves, too! You an also buy "bondage tape" for low-cost, which is a PVC tape that adheres to itself. It's cheap, easy to remove, and disposable too! Look around the home for potential tools – neck ties, scarves, and belts. Really, your imagination is the best toy you have, so play around and experiment! Most of all, have fun!

This is all a very basic starting point to begin your journey with. The best resource you have to discover your erotic map in playing with dominance and submission is each other. Find out what you both like, and what you'd like to try, and have fun discovering together. The possibilities are endless!

For questions on sexual dominance or submission, feel free to contact Portia via her blog! Also, e-mail reply@getlusty.com.

Seeking to shatter the myth that "nice girls don't talk about sex", and somehow trying to survive her mid-30's in suburbia without large doses of vodka, Portia Blush is a saucy Sapiosexual who shares with an infectious wit and a candid vulnerability about her explorations of sex, love, intimacy, kink, the occasional obsession, and everything in between; one true story at a time.

She has over 10 years experience playing Switchy in the BD/SM scene, and has explored a myriad of relationship configurations from monogamous to poly. She holds a BFA from some hoity-toity NYC art school, and still ponders the meaning of life on a regular basis. Follow her on Twitter @erogenousblog and Facebook and of course, ErogenoUS her blog.

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Why Submissive Skills Are Underrated

We're fans of kink. From the history of kink, to the psychology of BDSM, to skills around dominance. How about being submissive? Even though it's Dick & Dildo December, that doesn't mean you gents can hone your submissive skills! Ladies, you, too! Curious about being a submissive? Clarisse Thorn offers her perspective as a "BDSM Feminist" on why submissive skills are truly underrated. Wondering if you have what it takes to be a submissive? Read on.

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I write a lot about my experiences with BDSM — that’s a 6-for-4 acronym that covers Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism and Masochism. I have a fair amount of experience engaging in BDSM; I also have a fair amount of experience in the BDSM subculture. The subculture consists of meetup groups, educational workshops, dungeons where people practice BDSM, a set of well-reputed books and resources, Internet social networking sites, etc. The subculture also has its own norms and pitfalls.

Many BDSMers use the word “bottom” to refer to a masochist and/or submissive, and “top” to refer to a dominant and/or sadist. I am a switch, which means I feel comfortable in either the top or the bottom role. I haven’t observed every BDSM group in the world, but in my experience, one BDSM subculture pitfall is that we don’t explicitly teach very many “bottom skills”. In fact, a lot of the time, “bottom skills” aren’t even recognized as skills.

But bottom skills are totally the skillsiest skillz you can imagine. Let me start by describing my ex-boyfriend who was most in touch with his bottom side. When I met him, I was much less experienced than him at BDSM, and I was basically unaware of my top side. I think there are probably a lot more women than we think who would be up for being BDSM tops, but since cultural norms tell us that women aren’t dominant, lots of those women simply don’t recognize those feelings. My ex-boyfriend agrees, and as a result he’s specifically trained himself to surreptitiously draw out a woman’s dominant desires.

With me, he started by giving me the gift of his fear. We saw each other around the community a few times, and I guess he took note. Then one day, we were both at a BDSM meetup, and from nearby — while he was speaking to someone else — he remarked that I terrified him. He knew that I’d overhear.

I looked at him. He avoided my gaze. Eventually he worked his way around the crowd so he was actually speaking to me, and that was when he actually met my eyes and said directly to me, straightforward, in a charming and casual tone: “I’m terrified.”

Of course, this is vulnerability on a silver platter: it’s confident vulnerability. You scare me. Yet I’m still talking to you, even though I’m sure you could hurt me real bad. He was being so obvious, yet there were still so many tacit dimensions to what he was doing, and I had never quite seen anyone like him before. I was intrigued, and felt myself gain a predatory focus.

He was like that throughout our relationship. Throughout the flirting, throughout the BDSM encounters. He communicated very directly when there was a need for direct talking. But he also showed me so much of what to do. When I put my nails in certain places, he’d arch his body directly into them and groan. When I did something that was difficult for him, he’d get quieter and less responsive in an extremely obvious way while he dealt with it. He’s the only man I’ve ever seen who knew how to tip his head back for a kiss (he was also tall, so most women would have to be in very particular positions for this to work, ahem). A lot of this was instinctive, of course; many bottoms would recognize themselves in these tendencies … but he’d learned his own instinctive responses and fine-tuned them.

I want to make it clear here that I don’t want anyone to “perform” a type of sexuality that they don’t like; trust me, I know just how much a person can feel responsible for “acting out” their sexuality. I’ve been there. But that’s different from a person taking their own desires and reactions, and honing them for maximum communication power. That kind of thing takes experience and self-knowledge. Which is one of the things I value most about BDSM — the inner exploration it can enable. I just wish we taught about it better.

I definitely think the BDSM subculture is great at teaching certain topics: for example, how to perform certain activities safely. In major USA cities, there are often workshops on how to safely hit people with whips. Communication also gets a decent amount of airtime; for example, everyone in the community knows what a safeword is (indeed, a lot of people outside the community know about safewords, too). Sometimes, tops are even “judged” on their “dominant skill set”. But bottoms are usually seen as just being “along for the ride” — or are merely judged for “how far they’re willing to go”, which is even worse, because it discourages some bottoms from setting boundaries.

As a side note, here’s a pro tip on looking for tops. If you’re talking to a top who can’t stop bragging about how awesome and experienced they are, I advise you to walk away. Or perhaps I should merely say that I, personally, would walk away from that. My favorite, most respectful dominant partners have all had a hefty sense of humility and been very willing to learn — even if they were very experienced.

So why sub skillz got no respect? I think it’s partly because a lot of them are subtle and hard to see. In general, any “receptive” social role is going to get less credit in an interaction, because lots of people think that the “initiating” social role “does all the work” — but the truth is that the “initiating” social role simply does more visible work. You see this happening with mainstream gender roles, too; for example, some men complain about how women expect them to do “all the work”, like asking women out on dates. But the truth is that for any role played by one gender in the usual heterosexual mating dance, there is an opposing or matching role that takes its own kind of work. For every man who has trouble asking women out, there is a woman who has trouble appearing approachable … or who wants to ask men out but thinks that she will freak men out by doing so (and indeed, she might well be correct). Things are tough all over, baby.

Communication — any kind of communication — is not just explaining one’s desires out loud. There’s also a ton of non-verbal feedback and non-verbal reading that goes on. Everyone communicates, but because a lot of bottoms communicate primarily by responding, bottom communication is often invisible. There’s also a whole nother level of bottom communication sometimes achieved by people who are really good, which involves tacitly running the encounter from the bottom side. Like what my ex-boyfriend did in my anecdote above.

Other bottom skills have to do with bottoms monitoring their body and taking care of themselves. Some of this is physical. One thing I would absolutely love to see is a BDSM workshop on body chemistry: I’ve written about it and I try to keep an eye on how it works in my life, but I’ve literally never seen a class on the topic. My experience is that all kinds of things — from sleep to intoxicants to the quality and amount of food I’ve eaten — can drastically alter my experience of BDSM (and, for that matter, sex). But I’m not a nutritionist or a doctor, and although some things are obvious — like: it’s easier to take pain when I’ve had enough sleep — some things are not obvious at all.

And then there’s breath control. I am definitely a novice at this, but I’ve got the feeling that understanding how my breathing intersects with my pain tolerance could lead to a whole new level of BDSM. The one thing I’m sure of right now is that it’s easy to reflexively stop up my breathing when I’m in a lot of pain, or to breathe irregularly. But if I can force myself to breathe more regularly, then it gets easier. So the only advice I can offer bottoms here is for them, too, to watch their breathing and look for patterns.

Of course, taking care of oneself isn’t just physical; it’s mental and emotional too — setting boundaries and understanding oneself. It’s important for a bottom to know what they won’t do, will do … or what they want to do, but suspect will be complex and hard to deal with. In fairness, it is also important for tops to know these things about themselves, but the risks bottoms take tend to be more intense and direct than the ones tops take. Also in fairness, the BDSM community has developed some tactics for talking about this: for example, I often write about BDSM checklists, which list a huge array of BDSM activities and encourage people to rate their desire for and experience with those activities.

A lot of taking care of oneself involves a self-aware learning process. Calling a safeword is absolutely a skill, and it’s a skill that gets easier with practice; but sometimes I’m still not sure whether I actually want to safeword, and I’ve been doing BDSM fairly regularly for years. (For this reason, a lot of BDSMers use the “stoplight system”, whereby “red” means “stop definitely for real!” and “yellow” means “I’m not sure about this, but I don’t think I want to stop, so let’s slow down or switch activities”.) A lot of bottoms enter an altered state of consciousness we refer to as “subspace“; understanding how to navigate subspace is its own highly personal thing that deserves multiple stand-alone articles. Plus, I’ve learned a lot about which types of pain I like and dislike, but my tastes (like everyone’s) can and do evolve over time.

In short, processing intense sensations — and understanding where a person’s brain is at, and what they want even when they’re processing those sensations — is its own constellation of BDSM skills. Again, most relevant for bottoms, but also relevant for tops.

Originally posted at Clarisse Thorn's blog.



Clarisse Thorn is a feminist S&M writer who has lectured from Berlin to San Francisco, and written from The Guardian to Jezebel. She wrote a book about men, dating, and sex called Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser; she's also got a best-of collection called The S&M Feminist. She's always writing something new, so check out her list of books.

Find her on Twitter @clarissethorn and Facebook.

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