Limit
The single most misunderstood word in the vocabulary, mostly by people who have decided that limits are a starting position to be worked on. They are not. They are the shape of the person.
Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.
In short
- Hard limit: will not happen, not negotiable, no explanation owed.
- Soft limit: needs discussion, depends on trust, or is a maybe rather than a no.
- Limits can be added at any time, including mid-scene and including for no stated reason.
- Somebody who treats your limits as a challenge has told you everything you need to know.
What it means
A limit is something a person will not do. Hard limits are absolute: not this, not ever, not with anyone, and no reason is owed. Soft limits are the greyer ones. Things somebody is uneasy about, would want to build up to, would do only with a partner they know well, or would do in one form and not another.
Limits run in both directions. The person delivering has them too, and a top without a written list is usually someone who has not thought about it rather than someone who is up for anything. Mine are on the limits page, as a worked example of what a written list looks like.
In practice
The useful exercise is to write your own before you speak to anybody. Not a checklist with two hundred boxes, which mostly produces panic and a lot of guessing, but a short document in your own words. Three headings work: what I want, what I am curious about but nervous of, and what is not happening. Everything you have no opinion on stays off the page.
It is also fine, and normal, for the list to be mostly unknowns at the start. "I do not know how I feel about being told what to wear and I would want to try a small version of it first" is a better line than a confident yes or no you have invented to look decisive.
Limits get added, not just removed. Something that was fine in March can stop being fine in September, sometimes because of what happened in a scene and sometimes because of something entirely unrelated to any of this. Adding one requires no justification and should attract no comment.
Where people go wrong
The big one: treating a partner's limits as an opening bid. There is a strand of thinking, usually from men who have read too much of a particular kind of forum, that soft limits are for pushing and hard limits are for eroding patiently over time. That is not dominance. It is a negotiation tactic aimed at somebody who has already told you the answer.
A softer version of the same failure is the person who accepts a limit out loud and then keeps bringing it up. Mentioning it at every negotiation, joking about it, asking whether you have thought about it again. That is pressure with good manners on top, and the effect on someone who wants to please is the same.
The last error is confusing a limit with a safe word. A limit is agreed before anything happens and defines what is in the room. A safe word is what stops things once they have started. You need both, and neither substitutes for the other.
State one limit early, plainly, on something small, and watch what happens in the next ten seconds. Acceptance without discussion is what you want. A joke, a sigh, a slight cooling, or a question about why, all tell you what raising the next one will cost you.
Common questions
What is the difference between a hard limit and a soft limit?
A hard limit is something that will not happen, full stop, and it is not open to persuasion. A soft limit is something a person is wary of, would need to discuss, or might do in particular circumstances with someone they trust. Treating a soft limit as an invitation to push is the fastest way to turn it into a hard one.
How do I work out my limits if I have never done any of this?
Write down the things you are certain about first, then the things that make you uneasy without knowing why, and leave everything else blank. Uncertainty is a normal state and blank is a legitimate answer. Reading a limits list someone else has written is usually more useful than a checklist, because it shows what the reasoning looks like.