My limits

This is my own list, published as a worked example of what a limits list looks like when somebody has actually thought about it. Seeing one is more useful than being told to write one, and yours will look different.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

Everything on this page is about consensual activity between adults over 18, which is the first item on the list below and the only one that is not really a limit so much as a wall.

Hard limits

These do not move. They are not affected by how well a conversation is going or by how much either of us wants it. I have listed the reasoning for each, because a limit with a reason attached is easier to trust than a bare rule.

Adults over 18 only

In person, in conversation, in the premise of any scenario and in images of any kind, everybody is an adult over 18. If a conversation moves away from that it ends there, permanently. This is not a limit I discuss and there is no version of the question that gets a different answer.

No blood

Nothing that breaks skin. Split welts, cutting, needles, anything that draws blood. The infection risk is real and unnecessary, and broken skin is well over the line where consent stops being a defence in England and Wales, so a single bad stroke exposes both people involved. Detail on that in the legal page.

No permanent marking

No branding, no scarring, nothing meant to outlast the fortnight. Bruises fade and that is the point of them. The problem with permanence is that the person consenting tonight cannot consent on behalf of the person who has to live with it in fifteen years, and I am not willing to make that decision for anybody.

No breath play

No choking, no smothering, nothing that restricts the airway or the blood supply to the brain. There is no technique that makes this safe, the failure mode is death rather than injury, and it happens to experienced people. It also breaks the one mechanism everything else depends on, because a person who cannot breathe cannot use a safe word.

Nobody who has been drinking heavily

A glass of wine with dinner and turning up drunk are different things and I can tell the difference. Alcohol changes what pain feels like, delays the point at which somebody notices they have had enough, and makes consent legally and practically questionable. If I am unsure about somebody's state, nothing happens that evening. That has cost me an evening more than once and it has never once been the wrong call.

Nothing recorded

No photographs, no video, no audio, no recorded calls. Not for me, not for them, not for anyone. A recording outlives the relationship it was made in, and once it exists you are trusting a person you may not know in five years. Recording someone in an intimate situation without their consent can be an offence (voyeurism), and so can sharing or threatening to share intimate images, but my reason is the simpler one: a file is a hostage.

No meeting anybody I have not talked to properly first

Properly means real conversation over time, a video call, and references in both directions. Not a formality and not a box to tick in an afternoon. Somebody who wants to skip that stage is asking me to accept a stranger, and is also telling me they would accept one, which worries me on their behalf. How that process works is on vetting a partner.

Soft limits and things I will discuss

The category people find harder to write, because it requires admitting to uncertainty. These are things that depend on the person, the circumstances, and a conversation happening well before anyone is in a room together.

• Marks that last. Bruising is negotiable and I want to know in advance what is acceptable, particularly around what somebody has to wear or who they live with. Marks anywhere clothing does not cover are a no by default.
• Intensity and implements. Everything from a hand to a cane is on the table as a conversation, and none of it is on the table without one.
• Humiliation, which I will do and will not improvise. If it is part of what somebody wants, I want the specific words agreed beforehand, and I do not use material about a person's body, their weight, their family or their work. Those land somewhere that does not switch off at the end.
• Scenarios drawn from domestic, office or formal settings, played by adults as adults. This is a large part of the British spanking tradition and I have no problem with it. Every character in them is an adult, and that is not a soft limit, it is the wall at the top of this page.
• Ongoing discipline arrangements with rules outside a single scene. I will discuss them, slowly, in writing, with a review date. The discipline section is mostly about how to do this without it going somewhere bad.
• Restraint. Light, discussed in advance, quick to release, never leaving somebody alone.
• Being watched, at an organised party with the rules that come with one.
• Receiving. I switch, so this list runs in both directions, and I have my own things I will not take. It is a fair question to ask anyone, on either side.

Scenes I am part of are not sexual by default. If that is a question, it is an explicit conversation held in advance, not something that drifts.

The part that actually matters

Everything above is about me, and it is the less important half of the page. Here is the other half.

A partner's limits are absolute. They are not an opening position, a target to be worked on over time, or a measure of how much somebody trusts you. If a person says no canes, the answer is no canes, and it stays no canes in month eight when things are going well. Anybody who treats a stated limit as the start of a negotiation has told you what they think limits are for, and you should believe them the first time.

Limits can also be added at any point. Before, during, after, and in the middle of something that was previously fine. A limit discovered halfway through is still a limit, the scene stops, and the correct response is thank you for telling me rather than any form of disappointment. People apologise when they do this and there is nothing to apologise for.

I have got this wrong. Early on I carried on a few strokes past a flinch that I read as the good kind, because I was reading rather than asking. She told me afterwards, kindly, and she was right. The lesson was not that I misread a signal, it was that interpreting a signal is the wrong method when a question takes two seconds.

Write your own before you talk to anybody

Sit down on your own, with nobody waiting on an answer, and write three columns.

Do it before the conversation rather than during it. Working out where your limits are while somebody is enthusiastically waiting is how people end up agreeing to things they had not thought about, and that pressure does not need to be deliberate on the other person's part to work.