Make Sure Your Rules Have a Safe Word

Image from beforeplay.org. Click for details.

My friend Rose, writing at her brand new blog Our Better Natures, makes an excellent point about the use of rules in relationships:

For these types of situations, I think that an idea from the kink and power exchange community is useful. For any healthy power exchange, even while playing with consensual nonconsent, there is an overarching level at which someone can always opt out. I suggest that we look at all rules and agreements as a form of role playing in this vein. With healthy power exchange, ideally, the power dynamics are explicitly negotiated with necessary safe words in place. Rules and agreements need to be negotiated in much the same way. Rules and agreements are their own type of role playing because we can never fully and truly give up our ability to make decisions, set boundaries, or leave the relationship and also still maintain healthy consent. If we take the view on consent outlined above, then there truly can be no inherent level at which anyone owes anyone else intimacy or control over their choices and emotional states.

This is a great point, and I think consensual power exchange is a great lens through which to view rulemaking in relationships. I've written before about how rules are a way that we psychologically manipulate our future selves into making the correct choices when we don't trust our future selves to do so. When we involve another person in the rulemaking (that is, we make a promise or agreement to another person), we implicitly give them the authority to demand compliance with that promise. In essence, it's a form of consensual power exchange whereby we voluntarily give up a bit of our freedom to another person or persons.

One of the most important concepts in any consensual power exchange relationship, be it a five-minute scene or a thirty-year relationship, is that consent must be ongoing and can be revoked at any time. This is an uncontroversial idea in BDSM communities, where the norm is to always have a safeword which will immediately end the scene as soon as any party want to opt out. In longer-term consensual power exchange relationships, all parties stress that the details of any power exchange agreement are entirely voluntary and open to revocation free from coercive pressure.

Relationship rules or agreements ought to be treated the same way. Ideally, all parties would be clear that anyone was free to unilaterally cancel any agreement at any time free from guilt, shame, or obligation. Sadly, people often view terminating an agreement as a hostile act or a betrayal. While the BDSM community is nearly united in support of the idea that power exchange can be revoked without penalty, the poly community lags far behind on this idea. It is remarkably commonplace to see people pressured, shamed, and coerced into abiding by agreements that no longer work for them.

As I've written before, sometimes terminating an agreement can result in the other party ending the relationship, and that is to be expected. The same principle that says any party can terminate an agreement at any time also mandates that any party is free to end the relationship at any time. The same principle applies in all consensual power exchange relationships.

So next time someone wishes to renegotiate or terminate an agreement, let's take a lesson from the BDSM community and recognize that it is always their right to do so, and allow them a space free of shame, obligation, or guilt.