No Limits

I saw a series of memes going by on Facebook the other day that grabbed my attention for a second. Before I could read through them the page refreshed and took them away and they were gone, but it did remind me of something I want to talk about.

Limits.

Or rather… lack of limits.

But let’s start with the definition of a limit.

We have soft limits and hard limits, and the definitions are slightly different.

Read more: No Limits

A soft limit can simply be something you don’t want to do, or aren’t interested in, but under the right circumstances you might be willing to try. It can also be something you’re nervous about trying.

It can even be a thing you are willing to do, but only with strict rules around it. For instance, “You can take my pants down, but my panties stay up until we know each other better.” A soft limit may change as the circumstances change.

A hard limit is a line that you will not cross. It’s a boundary. Hard limits are not to be played with. Often, they are there for serious intense reasons, maybe even trauma related.

Once a hard limit is stated, it’s considered law. Breaking a hard limit can and should mean the scene is over, and possibly the relationship is over too, if it was done deliberately.

Dominants should not be trying to push you on a hard limit. They shouldn’t be encouraging you to ‘try’ whatever it is, because you’ve given a firm no already.

Sometimes lines are crossed by accident or misunderstanding. At times a limit is not verbalized clearly enough, and your partner might overstep. They might even just forget if it hasn’t been discussed in a while. In that case, hopefully a conversation will clear things up, and there won’t be any trauma over it. People do make mistakes.

I once accidentally stepped over a line with a sub. She had told me “I’m okay with most things, just don’t slap my face.” It had come up in casual conversation and I’ve never been one to really slap people, so I probably didn’t give it the consideration I should have.

At the time, I didn’t even realize she was stating a hard limit, or I would have stopped the conversation to get more detail, even though I didn’t expect it was likely to come up. A while later, maybe a year, we were in the grocery store and playing around while we shopped. And I reach up to playfully ‘slap’ her cheek.

I didn’t consider it a slap. It was basically just a pat, and when she said, ‘Don’t slap my face’ I assumed she meant ‘Don’t slap my face hard’.  It wasn’t, in any way, meant to hurt at all. We were just playing, but I knew something was wrong from the way she flinched back.

Just the act of looking like I was going to slap her, the hand motion, the touch on her face, was enough to trigger something. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t a real slap. It was enough to trigger her, and I think brought up some bad memories.

We talked about it, right there in the store, and it was fine, but I never made that mistake again. And it taught me a valuable lesson. You need a detailed conversation about limits, where both of you listen and make notes if necessary. Limits need to be named as limits. Casually mentioning things while you chat, and then not following up can lead to problems.

And please do remember that limits aren’t restricted to the submissive partner. Doms can have limits too. Their limits might not be specifically relevant to your particular relationship, since often the Dominant is initiating and are better able to avoid things they don’t want to do, but if they are relevant, they should be discussed.

For instance, “Joking about calling red is a limit for me. Safewords need to be taken seriously. They aren’t something to be bratty about, because I need to know when you’re in trouble. If you tease about it, I might not realize you’re serious someday when you need me to.” (I once saw a Dom in a club saying this to a brat after she, repeatedly, giggled and pretended she was going to say red if he spanked her.)

So, now that we’re clear on what a limit is, let’s talk about people who say they have no limits. I will sometimes see people in groups or on Fetlife bragging about not having any limits. Sometimes it’s outright “Oh, I’ll try anything” and other times it’s more like “With the right Dominant I’m willing to do whatever they want.”

I’ve even seen it listed in profiles and bios like, “Prefers a male Daddy type Dom. No limits.”

Claiming no limits is very attractive to a certain population. It will reel them in just like flies to honey, only it’s not the experienced Dominants who are intrigued by these statements. It’s the abusers who pose as Doms to pick up willing little pets that they can do anything they want with.

An experienced Dominant is never going to be excited by the idea of a sub with no limits, for several reasons. The first is, let’s be honest, if you’ve been around the scene for any length of time, I guarantee you have witnessed kinks you want nothing to do with.

I’m not kink shaming here, but there are extremely niche kinks out there that really only excite a very small group of people and if you’re saying that you’re fine with all of them… well, you’re either lying or you just don’t know what’s out there and you’re trying to hide inexperience.

Neither is a good look on a submissive who wants to play.

And… full kink shaming engaged here… there are kinks that are unethical and even illegal to engage in. And I don’t mean skirting the line of legal by hitting someone consensually. I mean full on illegal in a circumstance where there is no defense. So if you’re okay with those then I don’t want to know you.

Everyone has limits. EVERYONE.

The second reason is simple: if you’re not going to admit to your limits then you can’t be trusted to play with. It’s fine to be new. It’s fine to be inexperienced. Dominants know how to ease people in slowly, to let them try out a wide variety of things that are safe and appropriate for someone new to the scene.

If you don’t know your limits, then just say so. If you haven’t experienced enough to understand what your limits are it’s fine, but you need to communicate that, and even so you should at least have some idea of what you won’t do.

But when you walk in saying you have no limits, and the Dom knows very well that you must have some, then they have to wonder why you are hiding the information from them. It’s a bit like strolling through a mine field. You’re not giving them the information they need to find a safe path, which means anything they try could potentially blow up in their faces.

It’s risky for them and usually not worth it.

The third reason, is that it’s not healthy for you to put yourself entirely under someone else’s control without many thorough discussions about everything, during which time limits will be discovered. Even in Total Power Exchange (TPE) relationships there are limits.

Even slaves with contracts are careful to state those limits in writing, because they know how much power they are giving their Master. They don’t want any mistakes or misunderstandings.

I have never once, in all my years, met someone who had been in the scene for a while and truly had no limits. And if I did, then frankly I would move away from them quickly, because that is extremely unhealthy.

I have met many people who said they had no limits and then when you start listing some of the less popular and highly niched kinks, suddenly they realize that they do. They start looking horrified and say “Oh, I mean obviously I’d never be with anyone who wants to do that…” and you have to point out to them that they’ve just expressed a hard limit. They are just doing it in an unhelpful way.

Let’s be clear here. If you are saying you won’t play with someone who enjoys x, then you are stating a hard limit against x. You just aren’t communicating in a healthy way that x is off the table for you.

So yes, you have limits. You may feel like you don’t need to state them, because your limits won’t apply in the current situation. You may know the person you are playing with well enough to know you don’t need to list your limits with them—because they just wouldn’t do anything that was over the line with you.

Both of those are fine, especially if you have a safeword to allow things to stop if it somehow does happen that they stumble over a limit. But blanket statements about not having any limits are a bad idea all around. Just to sum it up…

Everyone has limits.

Claiming you have no limits shows that you’re hiding a lack of experience, outright lying, or just… really unhealthy and not stable enough to play with.

Saying you have no limits will attract predators, not Dominants.

Trying to be part of the scene without limits is unhealthy for you and the people around you.

And finally, one last reason why ‘no limits’ is a bad idea… It can set up unrealistic expectations. If you’re claiming to have no limits, it makes other people feel bad about expressing perfectly reasonable boundaries and lines.

“Oh, I don’t have any limits. I’m a perfect submissive. I’d try anything my Dom wanted me to,” is telling others, especially newbies, that this is behavior to emulate. But it’s not. Healthy boundaries lead to healthy relationships and not having limits is nothing to brag about.

Now, if you’ve gotten this far and still want to tell people you have no limits, then I’d like to just list a few of the things you’re saying you are fine with. All of these are kinks that people consensually engage in together.

Some of them aren’t even unusual but just part of more extreme dynamics. Or once-in-a-lifetime experiences that people have decided to try together.

No limits means you’re fine with:

People defecating on you

People peeing on you

Being shared sexually with a group

Being set on fire (under controlled circumstances with safety measures taken)

Permanent scarring (Branding, for instance)

Permanent body modification

Piercing

Waking up to someone having sex with you

Having parts of your flesh removed and eaten (Yes, it’s really a thing.)

Humiliation in public

Unexpected kidnapping Rp (Which means suddenly being dragged into a van, tied up and blindfolded, and then driven away. Only later to realize it’s part of a scene and you’re actually safe.)

Someone else deciding what you wear, where you go, when you sleep, what you eat… etc.

Sex without condoms

If you think I’m picking out the most extreme stuff… you’re right. Some (not all) of that is extreme, but that’s kind of my point. By refusing to state any limits you are allowing people to think you welcome extreme play.

I can almost hear people saying, “It’s not that big a deal. I have a safeword,” but why would I trust you to use a safeword when I can’t even trust you to be honest about having reasonable limits? If you’re not confident enough to state the things you won’t do upfront, then I can’t be sure you’ll be able to say no during a scene either.

Of course you don’t need to sit down with a Dom and say “Don’t cut off pieces of my flesh and eat it.” You don’t need to list every single thing out there in the world that you won’t do—you’d never have time to play if you tried.

But you do need to make it clear that you have limits. You have lines you won’t cross. and as you play, you will probably discover more. That’s natural. Having limits is natural.

Embrace them and see it as a good thing, a healthy thing.