For years, I used to tell prospective partners that my limits are anything anal, kissing and orgasms. I don’t kiss because it’s gross to stick a tongue in someone else’s mouth and just, no thank you. I don’t do anal because a former partner got real rapey with it and now it’s just a nightmare to process. I don’t do orgasms because, well, it is more fun not to do them? Well, that’s not all of it. For a long time, I could only have orgasms if I was being raped, then for a while I could have them but they were shit, now I can have great orgasms from one person but it’s still more fun not to have them (partly because I crash pretty hard from orgasms). Basically, satisfaction is overrated, arousal is everything. Those were my limits, I responsibly presented them to every partner but I have also kissed, done anal and had orgasms with some of those partners. All of the above, with my spouse. On the other hand, there are things that I didn’t know were limits, or could be, and I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t approached those spaces with someone.
So, what does that mean? Does it mean that limits are suggestions about which you change your mind when you meet the right or wrong person? I don’t think so. That’s a ridiculous idea. I do, however, think, limits require a form of communication different from fetishes. It’s cool to make a list of what you are into, it’s less information somehow to make that same list for limits. Limits are different. Maybe misunderstood. Maybe discussed in the wrong way. I am assuming the goal of limits is the same for all of us? To set boundaries that keep us safer? To ensure we do not get traumatized by play? To draw a boundary for new partners and old ones? To expose our fault lines to the people who engage with us sexually do not set us off? Those are good goals, but something about the discussion around limits feels so incomplete to me. For one thing, within limits, soft and hard, we discuss things that are repulsive, potentially traumatic, scary or off-putting, but everything you find attractive, ends at a limit and past that your favourite thing could traumatize you.
My favourite thing in the world of pleasure is having the shit slapped out of me. I am fucking obsessed with facial abuse and I am really hoping someday to contribute to the study of the long-term impacts of slapping as subject matter for my husband who, you guys, and this is how I know we are perfect together, has the exact degree and medical qualification you would need to study this. Chills, I swear, my own life is giving me chills. However, there are limits within how I would like to experience slapping and I didn’t know that until they were approached. There was a guy I once fucked in a white car (I mean, I would give you more information, but that is literally all I remember about him), I gave him the precursory list of things I like and my limits. I told him that I love being slapped, he liked that also so he slapped me a lot but he had a singular goal, to bruise my face and his slapping was completely based on achieving that goal. I didn’t know this was a limit for me. I love me a bruised face, but I want to feel like a bat
