# Rules and agreements > Writing rules for a consensual discipline dynamic: keep them few, make them checkable, give them a review date, and leave out any that remove independence. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/rules-and-agreements/ - Section: Discipline - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. Most agreements I have seen are far too long and far too vague, which are the same failure wearing two hats. The useful version fits on one side of paper, can be checked without an argument about interpretation, and says in plain words how it ends. --- ## In short - Three to five rules. Thirty-rule agreements are abandoned within weeks and teach both people that the rules are decorative. - A rule must be checkable. "Text me when you get home" works. "Be more respectful" cannot be assessed and becomes an argument. - Every agreement needs a review date and a plainly worded statement that either person can end it at any time, without penalty. - Rules touching money, contact with friends or freedom of movement are the ones that turn a dynamic into something the law calls coercive control. Everything here is between consenting adults over 18. The point of writing rules down is not ceremony. It is that memory is self-serving on both sides. Six weeks in, the person under the rules will honestly remember a softer version and the person holding them will honestly remember a stricter one, and the written page settles it without either of them having to be accused of lying. Beyond that, the drafting matters more than people expect. Nearly every arrangement I have watched collapse did so because of how the rules were written, not because either person lost interest in the idea. ## Few, not many Three to five. I would push most people towards three for a first attempt. Long lists feel serious while you are writing them, which is why people write them. They fail for boring mechanical reasons. Nobody remembers thirty rules, so breaches happen by accident rather than by choice, which makes any consequence feel like bad luck. And the person holding the authority cannot realistically check thirty things, so most of the list goes unexamined, which teaches both of you that rules here are broadly optional. A three-rule agreement that is genuinely enforced does more work than a thirty-rule one that gets quietly dropped in week three. Enforcement is the scarce resource, not ambition. Spend it where it counts. ## Checkable, not atmospheric This is the single change that improves most drafts. A rule has to be phrased so that at the end of the week both of you can look at it and agree, without negotiation, whether it happened. | Cannot be assessed | Can be checked | | --- | --- | | Be more respectful | No walking out of a disagreement without saying you need ten minutes | | Look after yourself properly | Light off by eleven on work nights | | Do not be careless about safety | Text when you get home, however late | | Stop procrastinating | The tax return open on Sunday morning for one hour | | Have a better attitude | Reply to my check-in message before you go to sleep | The left column produces arguments about interpretation, and the person who gets to interpret is the person with the authority, which is exactly the imbalance you do not want written into the founding document. The right column produces facts. Facts are easier to be fair about. ## Whose rules are they Here is the test I would apply to every line before it goes in. Is this something the person under the rule actually wants help with, or is it something the other person would like to impose? Those feel similar in the room and are completely different six months later. A rule about the late nights someone has been trying to give up for years, and has raised themselves, has a good chance of surviving. A rule about how they dress, or who they text, or the tone they use, imported by the other person because it would suit them, will curdle. It gets complied with for a while, then resented, then broken deliberately, and the eventual argument is never really about the rule. In practice I ask the person who will be under the arrangement to write the first draft on their own. Not because the other person has nothing to contribute, but because it makes the origin unambiguous, and because what people ask for when nobody is watching is usually more honest and more modest than what they will agree to in the moment. ## A review date, written on it Put an actual date on the page. Four weeks for a first attempt, then quarterly once something has settled. A review date does two things. It makes changing the arrangement an ordinary scheduled event rather than a confrontation, which matters enormously, because the person most likely to need a change is the one least positioned to raise it. And it gives you a fixed point at which the whole thing has to justify itself again rather than continuing by inertia. A review is not a report on the submissive partner. It is a review of the arrangement, and both people answer for it. If it only ever produces tighter rules, that is a direction of travel worth naming out loud. ## The exit clause, in plain words Somewhere on the page, in language a stranger could understand, it needs to say that either person can end this at any time, that no consequence attaches to ending it, and that ending the arrangement is not the same as ending the relationship unless someone separately decides it is. Write it plainly. Not "the submissive may petition for release", which is still inside the dynamic and therefore not an exit at all. Something closer to: either of us can stop this whenever we want, by saying so, and nothing happens as a result. Do not expect the document itself to carry legal weight. It does not make anything lawful, and it cannot bind your future self. That is set out properly on the page about [consent and coercive control](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/consent-and-coercive-control/), and it is the page I would read before this one if you only read one. > **The three areas to leave out.** Rules about money, rules about contact with friends and family, and rules about where someone may go are the ones that turn a negotiated arrangement into something else. They are also close to the statutory description of controlling or coercive behaviour under section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, which is a criminal offence in England and Wales carrying up to five years and requires no violence at all. > > > > If a rule would make leaving harder, it does not belong in an arrangement whose whole basis is that leaving is possible. ## What the page should actually contain Mine has run to about a side of A4 and looks unimpressive, which is correct. The parts that earn their place: - The rules. Three to five, each one a sentence, each one checkable. - What happens when one is broken, agreed in advance rather than invented on the night. - How and when reporting happens, and by which method. - Limits, including anything off the table entirely, carried over from your ordinary negotiation. - The review date. - The exit clause. - The date you wrote it, so you can see how much it has drifted. Both of you keep a copy. If one person holds the only copy of the rules, you have already built the wrong thing. ## Expect the first draft to be wrong It will contain at least one rule that turns out to be unenforceable, one that nobody actually minded about, and one that is far harsher than either of you realised when it was theoretical. That is not a failure of drafting. It is what the four-week review is for, and an agreement that has never been amended is usually one that has stopped being read. ## Read next - [Permission rules](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/permission-protocols/) - [Consequences, agreed in advance](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/consequences/) - [Accountability and check-ins](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/accountability/) - [Consent and coercive control](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/consent-and-coercive-control/) - [Setting one up from nothing](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/discipline/setting-it-up/) ## Sources 1. Serious Crime Act 2015, section 76. [legislation.gov.uk](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/9/section/76) 2. Home Office, *Controlling or Coercive Behaviour: Statutory Guidance Framework* (2023). > **Not legal advice.** Where this page mentions the law, it is general information written from an England and Wales position unless it says otherwise, and it is not legal advice. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own law. If your own legal position matters, speak to a solicitor. ## Common questions ### How many rules should a discipline agreement have? Three to five. Long lists look thorough and fail quickly, because nobody remembers thirty rules and the person holding them cannot possibly check thirty things. A short list that is actually enforced does far more than a long one that quietly stops being mentioned after a fortnight. ### What makes a rule work rather than fail? It has to be specific enough that both people can tell whether it happened. "Be more respectful" cannot be assessed and will turn into an argument about interpretation. "Text me when you get home" either happened or it did not. Checkable rules survive; atmospheric ones become a grievance. ### What should never go into a discipline agreement? Rules that control money, contact with friends and family, or freedom of movement. Those are exactly the areas the Home Office statutory guidance names when it describes controlling or coercive behaviour, an offence in England and Wales under section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, and they are also the ones that make leaving practically difficult. Keep the arrangement to conduct and habits, not access to your own life.