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ORIGINAL: Psykic

Hello, all. I have been on this site for a few years, but this is my first post to the message boards. Recently I have been trying to organize my thoughts, opinions, and the things I have learned regarding BDSM. As this message board seems to be a wealth of information, I thought that it would be a good place to collect even more insights and information, and hopefully to spark topics of discussion that will be mutually beneficial to all.

One of the things I wanted to organize are "Lessons I have learned". What I mean by this is that there is a type of lesson that one learns by experience. The type of thing that is rarely (if ever) written down, but if you forget it, can have disastrous results. I hope that some of you will see fit to add the lessons you have learned through experience, and hopefully include the story which brought about this realization. I will start:

Lesson 1: If you planning to be involved with someone, make sure that you both agree on terminology.
This I learned a while ago when I met a girl who said on her profile that she was seeking a play partner. We got to know one another online and on the telephone. We eventually met and played together. It seemed that things were going well, but the next day she told me that she did not think that we were compatible because she said that I was not dominant enough. Now, I was shocked to hear this. I think of "play partners" as an equal relationship between friends where one enjoys being tied up/flogged/pierced/whatever, and the other enjoys doing it. I do not think of it as something where there is much emphasis on D/s outside of play. In fact when I met her, I made a specific effort to avoid being dominant outside of play. After talking with her for a while, I found out that her definition of play partners was similar to what I thought of as a Dominant/submissive relationship, except more casual and without commitment. However, by the time I found this out, we were already getting along poorly, and eventually decided to stop talking. All of that stress and drama could have been avoided if one of us had simply said in the beginning: "What I mean by play partner is .....".

Lesson 2: If you are not in the right mindset to play (i.e. you are drunk, high, tired, emotional, etc.), then do not play; that should be obvious to everyone. What is less obvious is: If you are not in the right mindset to play, then do not allow play for which you are responsible to take place.
This is one I learned a couple of years ago when I was with my ex-slave. We went out to a club with a close friend of mine, and her master. Afterward we all went back to their hotel. At this point it was around three or four am, and while I have never been drunk or high in my life, I was quite tired. My friend and her master were already playing a bit when we arrived, and I allowed my slave to join them. I have virtually no sense of jealousy, and my friend had been telling me for quite a while how skilled and experienced her master is, so I figured that I would allow them all to have fun while I sat in a chair and observed. Eventually my friends' master asked my slave if she would like to try fisting. She agreed, so she laid on the bed with my friend next to her face holding her hand, my friends' master behind her, and me zoning out in a chair a few feet away. He began to fist her while my friend was giving encouragement on the other end. The fisting made some progress, but my friends' master stopped when my slave began bleeding heavily from her vagina. It was only when me and my slave were discussing this on the drive home that I found out that while my friend was whispering encouragement, my slave was whispering "stop, stop, please stop, it hurts, ow, ow, no, stop". The thing is that I actually heard her saying this, but for some reason it did not register in my mind until later because of how tired I was. I consider failing to stop what was going on that night to be the biggest mistake I have made in my life. It was a failure as a dominant, as a friend, and as a man. The only good thing that came of the experience is the knowledge that I will never, ever repeat this mistake in my lifetime.

Well, there are a couple of lessons I have learned from experience. I am hoping that there will be many more to follow from other members of this site. And to those dominants out there who are reluctant to admit that they are not perfect, remember the words of Oscar Wilde "Exprience is simply the name that we give to our mistakes". So do not think of this as admitting your mistakes, think of it as boasting your experience.

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ORIGINAL: Joseff

When you take controll of someone, be it in a scene or a relationship, you take responsibility for that person in that time.

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ORIGINAL: littlesarbonn

1. Never, ever cut the blue wire. It's just not a good idea.
2. Always have 3 numbers when listing important lessons you have learned.