Negotiation: It's not just for kinky relationships.

 At the beginning of every month, my partner and I will put the kids to bed, and then sit down to pay the bills.  This is not fun, or exciting and it would be much easier if one of us just went ahead and took care of it in between the other things they do all day. However, we do this because so many relationships are torn apart over financial conflicts.  By doing our bills together, we are both fully aware of where our money is going and take the time to discuss our financial goals and decisions.   As a result, we do not fight about money as we both know all there is to know about what we have and where it is spent.  

By doing the work we have avoided one of the biggest pitfalls in any relationship.  

We do the same thing with our intimacies.  We do the work, and it pays off. We have always played with a little bondage in the bedroom, but it was about seven years ago that we turned that play into our dynamic.  A dynamic in which we now participate in some way almost 24/7. 

The “transition” moment to me was the first time we sat down and conducted a negotiation.  I don’t remember where I found it, but I had come across a limits checklist while browsing the web one night.   Out of curiosity, I sent a copy to her.  When she showed me her results I was surprised.  Some items were as expected, but there was a lot more on the “Yes” and “Willing to try” list than I had ever expected.  

Not wanting to color my responses too much,  I didn’t read the rest of what she had filled out before I filled out my own copy and sent it to her.  

It was all on the table.  All the stuff we had wanted to try but were afraid to propose was sitting on those spreadsheets.   There were also a couple of items that I had suggested in the past that had clear “no”s next to them too.  Realizing that we had just learned a lot more about our sexuality in one spreadsheet than we had in 12 years of marriage, we sat down to talk and our first “Kink Negotiation” began, before we even knew that it was a thing.  

Suddenly finding a level of sexual openness we had never realized before, we jumped in with both feet!  We went on a shopping spree at adult shops and online and (Frenzy Warning) we went from zero to master/slave in one weekend and then, just as quickly realized we needed to dial back.  Our second negotiation was an exercise in getting a better understanding of our limits.  This was followed by buying books and learning to research kinks before jumping into them.   

The lesson we learned in that research is the lesson I am trying to impart with this article, Negotiate frequently and honestly!  

It quickly became clear that, just like with our money, we needed to sit down and discuss our intimacy regularly and we needed to do it with clear heads.  That means that, for our kink negotiations to be effective, we had to have them at the least sexy time we can find.  

So, once a month, for the last six years, when we sit down to do the bills, we finish by opening a negotiation workbook and walk through our dynamic once more.  It would be too easy to just say “No change, everything is great” so we take the time to go over limits, goals, desires, and misgivings one by one.  We had moved beyond the spreadsheet linked above and bounced through a few other guides.   Most recently we have been using “Sunny Megatron’s Negotiation Workbook” Some require little conversation, there are hard “NO” items that neither of us is likely to ever change our opinion on.  But there is always something that may spark conversation. 

We have had hard limits become maybe’s and are now part of our usual scene.  We have had items move from yes to a hard limit.  We have even moved a punishment into the reward category after I caught her bratting just to get it.  

The point is we talk openly and freely about our sexuality.  While we started doing this to help navigate our kinks and protect each other’s enthusiastic consent, I believe that every couple should sit down and negotiate their sexual relationship, even if it is vanilla for a very important reason.  

Having a frank and honest conversation about a topic as taboo as our sexual appetites has a way of breaking down filters and barriers between us.  We begin the night discussing our money, then we discuss our sex.  By the time we finish that, we are ready to talk about absolutely anything!  We have never communicated with each other better than we do since we started frequent negotiations.  As a result, we have never been closer or more comfortable with each other than we have been since we “got Kinky.” We have shared the dark secrets that we used to be terrified of revealing to anyone.

Religion, philosophy, gender expression, morality, and faith have all been subjects that sprang out of our conversations that began as kink negotiations.  The very fact that we are now writing and self-publishing erotica is the result of a conversation we had in a negotiation last year.  

The scheduled negotiation is not the only negotiation we do.  We have triggers for negotiation built into our dynamic.  For example, if one of us has to call a “Full Stop” Safeword, we allow time to cool off and then have a negotiation the next day to discuss what happened, why we called, and what can be done better in the future.  In one case, this introduced a new hard limit and removal of a toy from rotation.  

We may also just ask for negotiation if something is on our minds.  Our last “Impromptu” Negotiation was simply about the wording of one of the rules regarding my sub’s duties.  It was as in-depth as adding “the” into the line.  

The point is that Negotiation brought us openness, which brought us familiarity, which led to comfort which has made our dynamic one of the most rewarding and safe things we have in our lives.   All because we take the time to do the work.  

Stay Kinky, Stay safe