On Safewords

I've been following an ongoing discussion about butch/femme relationships (among other things) at Sinclair's blog, and while I'm not ready to tackle what *I* think about various gender expressions and sexuality, I did note an interesting comment from one of her readers about safewords.

Actually, I'm going to go back and find the comment so that I can give credit where credit is due: Kimi Dreams (here's her blog) commented on this post by Sinclair and mentioned that not all BDSM relationships utilize a safeword. All of this is to set the stage for me to say: we started out without safewords, Daddy and I. It worked at first, as we both grew more confident in our desire and in what we could expect from one another. I think we both wanted to be safeword-free for the duration of our relationship because that's the kind of friction that is most ignitable between us: what he wants to take from me and how I am able to give it up, and really, I don't want to be able to say no, and he doesn't want me to either.

But we ran into a problem. I have, as so many of us do, a very rocky time in my sexual past that occasionally rears up and bites me when I am not expecting it. One afternoon, Daddy began lining my breasts, belly, and clavicles with clothespins. The pain was searing, so intense that I couldn't keep still and in fact barely kept from screaming. I cried and thrashed but he refused to yield. Suddenly I was beyond terror -- I lost control of my emotions and began hysterically crying. I felt myself begin to panic (I have panic disorder -- normally this wouldn't happen in this situation, though) and tried to use my usual methods to calm down but the pain pushed aside everything I attempted.

"If you need me to stop, say the word," he told me, another pin biting into the thin skin above my right collarbone, but I didn't know any such word. "I don't know it, oh god, just take them off, please, please," I screamed, panic constricting my throat and roughening my voice. He saw, too late, that I was far beyond the state he had intended to put me in and immediately removed the pins, gathering me into his arms and talking to me until I was in control again.

After that, we established safewords. I can't speak for everyone in this kind of relationship, but I know for us that we need to be able to tell each other, very quickly, if things move in a bad direction. And yet I still wish I could have held on to the ideal of a safeword-free relationship...part of that is just my own pride. But I have yet to safeword because he was hurting me "too" much. So far only my own mind has overwhelmed me to that degree.