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The Contract
All the way back in January, I mentioned to LK that Sir and I were making a contract to set out the rules in our dynamic and she told me that I could make a post on it. A short 2 months later, it has been completed so now I can post! Now, this took a while for three reasons: the first of which is that Sir and I live apart and it’s rather difficult to sort this out online; the second of which is that when we were together in person it usually had vanilla people present; the third is because both Sir and I love legal lingo. So it shouldn’t actually take as long it did with us.
Now, the contract itself was written by me – Sir assigned me the contract as homework, basically. He gave me a deadline for the first draft but after that it was a slow process. We read some things online, and most of them tended to agree that the contract should be drafted by the submissive, but with the input and ultimate approval of the Dominant – really, there’s a lot of back and forth.
The important part here is that your contracts need to suit YOUR DYNAMIC. For Sir and I, we like long legal sounding things because we’re pretentious like that, lol. Your contract doesn’t have to have any of this – I’m just posting a summary of mine to provide inspiration. 🙂
Our contract had 21 parts to it and ended up around 30 pages long [see what I mean about the legal lingo.] Anyway, I’ll give a rundown on what we covered – most of it was self-explanatory, but I’ll go into detail when it’s not.
1. Fundamental Terms: This was all about setting out the mutual goals of the party – things like the duration of the contract, that it must comply with the Safe Sane Consensual rule, and what is hoped to be achieved.
2. The Dominant’s Rights and Duties: This section is self explanatory. However, while some things only warrant a mention in this section [“The Dominant shall be referred to as ‘Master'”, “The Dominant accepts the submissive as his property, and, as such, is his to own, dominate, and discipline however he sees fit, subject to the terms of this contract.”, etc] there are other things which get expanded on in the rest of the contract [such as Punishment, and Limits]. Basically, put in whatever you both deem necessary.3. The submissive’s Rights and Duties: same rules as the above section.
4. Training: This section sets out the parameters for the training of the submissive. It includes things like what what exercises the submissive is required to do, what she is training for [e.g. deep throat] and how she’s training, and how the Dominant shall check her progress.5. Mindfulness: This one talks about how the submissive must maintain a respectful tone, shouldn’t ignore the Dominant. Basically, sub manners and anything else that helps her keep mindful.
6. Submissive Maintenance: This covers how the Dominant will take care of the submissive, mentally and emotionally, and how he make sure she feels all dominated and loved. This includes the setting of tasks.7. D/s in the Vanilla World: This section discusses how the couple shall behave in public, and words/phrases the Dominant can use to conduct his submissive in public.
8. Scene: This section covers scenes play, “play punishment”, and mind-fucks. Most of it is kind of administrative [things like requiring a warm-up before impact-play, how the submissive shall wait for the scene, definitions], but others fed into the mental-wellbeing stuff. [both Sir and I felt mind-fucks needed to have some rules for our dynamic]9. Communication: Respectful tone, down-time, temporary suspension of the dynamic, easy stuff.
10. Experimentation: Protocol to be followed when trying new activities. Basically higher levels of safety, more checking in, and the like. It also has an Appendix attached full of activities that couple would like to try.11. Health: Any medical conditions the Dominant and/or submissive have and how they shall be catered for. Things that shall be avoided, and how illnesses shall affect play/scenes.
12. Privacy: This is just about measures on maintaining our privacy- because Sir and I are fraidy-cats of vanilla people.13. Sexual Availability: This section sort of reinforces the Mindful section because I need to remember that my temper is not an excuse and “methods” to negate my temper. However, that only accounted for one clause before Sir turned it into an orgasm control section.
14. Location: For Sir and I this was about what times and locations we’ll have our scenes. It is specified that Living Arrangements will eventually take it’s place, and that will specify things like household chores and more on availability.15. Equipment: Who maintains the equipment, cleans it, and keeps it.
16. Contingencies: If something happens that isn’t covered already, it’s the Dom’s call. If the sub has a serious problem with it then she needs to go back to section Communication and comply with that.17. Punishments: What actions are punishable [doesn’t have to be specific, can just say “breaches of section BLAH”], what safe words can be used [Sir has allowed the Yellow safe word but no others], a reference to Play Punishments. We also have a list of appropriate punishments for “mild” through to “severe” offenses.
18. Aftercare: Obvious.19. Limits: It states the definitions of limits, and then refers to Appendices where the limits are kept. The Appendices for the Dominant were odd because my Sir has some different limits on what he would do, versus what he would have done to him so it was weird to write up.
20. Safe word: Lists the safe words and what they may be used for, as well as punishments for misuse of the safe words, and penalties for ignoring safe words.
21. Penalties: My Sir felt that he needed “punishments” for if he did something wrong, at least in the beginning of our dynamic and until we’re really settled. This section was entirely written by him.And finally, we also have an appendix on Sir’s rules. 🙂 It’s a pretty exhaustive list but the really important things is that your contract can be as long or as short as you want! It just needs to work for you. 🙂
Thanks for paying attention for so long XD
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3 Replies
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Thank you for this post. We are talking about contracts etc at the moment. It is always helpful to have some sort of guidelines on what can or should be included. I like the layout, the orderliness of it. Putting it into sections defines roles and responsibilities I think.
I would be interested to know if you had to make any changes to your dynamic to fit the contract or did you write the contract around your existing rules etc?
Are you finding it easy to stick to it?
Do you need to refer back to it regularly or is it all what you do anyways and is just now down in black and white?
We are very early on in our journey, so we’re settling for some basic rules, responsiblities and limits and we will build on this over time. Eventually it might develop into a formal contract.-
Thank you 🙂 I’m glad someone finds it useful. Sir and I, especially Sir, are sticklers for order so he very much wanted the contract.
We wrote the contract around our existing dynamic, but one thing that was nice is that when we put it to contract we sort of… finessed things. For instance, it got Sir to really think about his feelings towards punishments and helped him articulate those to me in the form of that section. Talking about our limits and what we wanted to try was also good since my Sir is sometimes shy about trying things (as am I for that matter) so having it there in black and white that we’d like something is nice.
Since the contract was based around what we already had, it’s been fairly easy to stick to and we don’t really have to refer back to it. The only times I’ve looked back to it since we made it were to take another look at the “safe signals” (the safe words for when i can’t talk) so I could get used to them [I picked them but I hadn’t used them] and when I had some trouble with my training.
One reason we had a section on communication is that if part of the contract was no longer working for us we could sit and sought it out. For instance, my training section was fine during the university holidays and for the less intense weeks but when assignments and exams came around I simply couldn’t handle it without causing detriment to my own education, something Sir would not approve of. So we had our meeting to sought out that section. We have some clauses telling us when to revise it, but also we revise it when we feel the need to (like if limits have changed).
But since it’s all based around our existing dynamic it’s been easy to stick to most of it.
For me, the contract is… it’s kind of an affirmation. It’s me saying “Yes this is what I want”, which is rather novel since before Sir what I wanted never really came into the equation because I was always concerned about what other people want and thought that articulating my desires and wants would be pressuring them. Of course, the fact that Sir asked for the contract makes it even more special to me, because it’s evidence that he and I want the same things and that I’m not forcing him. 🙂
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Thank you for posting this! Sir and I are new to D/s, and we both feel it is necessary to write everything down. We feel having a written contract will make things more clear, define each role, duties and responsibilities, punishments, etc. I appreciate seeing other examples of contracts and how they are laid out, so I know better where to go with ours! 🙂
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